Hecuba’s Dream

Abstract

Bodies are hurtling out of chariots, horses rearing up, weapons piercing breastplates, warriors killing and being killed. This is the siege of Troy at its peak, raging across the ceiling of the sala di Troia. Along the walls, too, frescos have been painted in Giulio Romano’s grand style: the Trojan Horse, the Death of Ajax, Hecuba’s Dream … Hecuba might be a Renaissance nude but for the shadowy figure at her back, an omen, is it? A messenger arriving like a bird to give the fatal sign. In his hand, a firebrand is delicately painted to show a line of light piercing Hecuba’s womb. Strange, how some have thought that Romano’s visions of Troy were the Iliad brought to life, for nowhere in that poem does Hecuba dream. The painter must have been reading Apollodorus’s Library and stumbled across a fragment that tells of how the young queen dreamt of giving birth to a fatal firebrand. Was it her utter vulnerability that moved him so, that drove him to imagine Hecuba as Beauty unaware of itself, the Dream, a delicate brush of wings, the touch of a hand?